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Sunday, April 1, 2018

Consider This

My Forest

Were there no mosquitoes in the 40s and 50s? No Lyme
Disease? Rabid attacking coyotes? Salmonella infected turtles? Swarms
of killer bees?

Apparently not, because I spent most of my free time
in the woods in all seasons, in every kind of weather. It was never too
hot or too cold, too wet or too dry for me to be exploring in the woods.

I came from a rather dysfunctional family. There was
constant Cut With A Knife tension in the air along with thick clouds of
blue Lucky Strike smoke, all accompanied by the loud pleasured exhalings
after the day’s first swig of Cutty Sark. Thus it was prudent for me
to come home from school, feed my face, do my homework, call my beloved
Springer Spaniel, Punch, and get outta Dodge. And I did.

I was fortunate enough to have been raised in a home
surrounded by acres of thick forest, enormous old trees, rocks, streams
and everything a woodland loving kid could want. I roamed without fear
throughout those miles of forest and often think if I went back today,
and if those woods were still there and not buried beneath a parking
lot, I know I could still walk everywhere in complete familiarity and
safety. Every single thing there welcomed me. And to be honest, there
are times, not many but some, when I still sort of yearn to do that.

One time, when my imagination and fantasies really
grabbed me, I dug a huge hole in the side of a hill and covered the
opening with many woven pine branches, leaving a space for my face to
peer through. It was where I decided I’d live forever, dining on
foraged meals, and I knew if I stayed very still in my safe cave, I’d be
able to see wildlife at work. Birds flew by, woodpeckers, owls, hawks,
bluebirds, jays, crows, songbirds, and eventually a couple of
chickadees actually landed on my outstretched hand that happened to have
a few broken Saltine pieces in it. Shiny black and orange salamanders
waited for me from under all the rocks in my forest when I bothered to
crawl out of my cave. I once saw a beautiful opossum staggering
comically toward the nearby stream’s edge. She had just risen from
hibernation, glanced at me, I didn’t move, shook herself and continued
on her way. Deer and pheasant, rabbits, racoons, red and grey squirrels
passed my home in the hole, and once a family of sweet faced skunks. I
watched an enormous snapping turtle lumbering through the woods looking
for soft earth in which to lay her eggs. These wonderful animals all
looked at me and I looked back but did not move, and in time they walked
around the forest near me, fearlessly ignoring and accepting, my
presence.

I used to fantasize that I could live in the woods and
totally sustain life if I just gathered lots of skunk cabbage and wild
onions, birds’ eggs, frogs’ eggs, (yucko), the chewy insides of acorns.
I knew how to suck the nectar from the honeysuckle blossoms and how
delicious clover was, and I even knew certain leaves and grasses were
lush, tender and edible. I knew these things because I used to own a
treasured book that taught wanna-be back-to-nature folks how to dine on
certain blossoms, wild berries, seeds, nuts and mushrooms, and even
identifiable insects for protein sources. My book showed pretty accurate
photos of the poisonous things to be avoided if one did not wish to
drop to the floor of the forest after eating them to spend hours
screaming in agony until death mercifully decided to stop by. I sure
wish I still had that book but it’s been lost somewhere between my youth
and old age. Not that I’d ever go out in my current back yard and
begin foraging around for the evening’s salad, but back then, it was a
magic book to me.

And yet there was something enthralling about dying a
dramatic and back-to-nature death while lying on the soft forest floor
and staring up through the old, swaying trees. After all, I’d happily
fallen asleep countless times while gazing up through the branches of
those tall trees, and still to this day believe that trees have their
own seductive, siren call as their leafy or piney branches reach and
bend and undulate in the wind. Trees can sing you know, and for me it
was and still is a spellbinding sound, distant and enchanting, like
woodland harps.

I knew how to make a fire in the wild because my
father, a mighty hunter, woodsman and business geek taught me, but I
always carried a small magnifying glass with me to use to start fires,
with the sun’s help of course, its magnified rays aimed at a few dry
leaves. That never failed to give me a small fire to warm my hands and
feet during my early spring or fall meanderings.

How dearly I wanted to be an all-nature-girl and to
rely on the forest to supply me with all I needed to survive, but I also
wasn’t entirely cray cray. I was always at least smart enough to carry
a few packs of matches, and a lot of those big wooden ones that would
strike on any surface. I mean if I was going to coddle those birds’ eggs
in an old pot I’d had the foresight to hide behind a pile of rocks
along with a couple of old tin plates, a cup, fork and big salt shaker, I
did not want to spend too much time making fires when a couple of
matches did the job in a few seconds. All that string and wood and
flint nonsense to achieve one tired spark was far too labor intensive
for me.

And yes, fear not, I always stomped out all my fires
and drowned them in spring water because I was also smart enough to do
my forest thing next to a good water source. And oh my, that water was
clear and cold and sweet and I did not ever even think about creatures
doing whatever creatures do in streams. It just didn’t matter, and I
never got sick.

But how come I have zero memory of being bitten by
mosquitoes? Touched by poison ivy? Stung by bees? Attacked by lurking
carnivores? Bitten by anything? Looped at by evening bats? Chased by
Bigfoot? Today I can’t walk to my mailbox without swatting countless
mosquitoes or dive-bombing flies, and yet I cannot remember ever being
assaulted by those beings as a kid. Was I that oblivious back then?
When I go back there in memory (and I’m doing that a lot lately) I just
can’t recall swarming mosquitoes or any other biting beasties when I
walked all those miles through those quiet, beautiful, singing sighing
woods. Weren’t they there? Or were they kind, and stayed away from me as
I meandered? I do wonder about the wonder.

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